As someone who is perpetually online I often wonder if there’s a healthier way I can use the web. Then this podcast dropped in my feed:

🎧 Is there a sane way to use the internet? (Search Engine)

If there’s one thing you do this week, give it a listen.

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I also finally caught up on two articles that have been sitting in my reading list for far too long.

The first is about TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) who make practically every modern computer chips. The hardware market is a great indicator for the future of software. TSMC are a fascinating company and this is a fun read:

Stamina, meanwhile, allows the TSMC scientists to push this game of atoms forward without flagging, without losing patience, through trial and error after error. How one stays interested, curious, consumed with an unrelaxed and breathless craving to know: This emerges as one of the central mysteries of the nano-engineering mind. Weaker minds shatter at the first touch of boredom. Distraction. Some in Taiwan call these American minds.

I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory (Wired / Virginia Heffernan)

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The second was about all the website and app usage data you can find by Googling. Most of that data comes from a company called Sensor Tower, but their method of data collection is flawed making their data unreliable:

So, I see three ways Sensor Tower collects usage information for apps and websites that aren’t their own: (1) ad-blocking web browser extensions, (2) screen-time monitoring apps for Android and iOS, which on iOS requires access to Screen Time, and (3) the Adblock Luna VPN…Data collected from these apps might be accurate for those users, but are users who self-identify as having an “addiction” to their devices representative of typical users? This seems a bit like trying to glean beverage consumption statistics by polling self-professed alcoholics — neither those actively struggling with an addiction nor those who are successfully managing one strike me as likely to be representative of the general public.

What’s the Deal With Sensor Tower? (Daring Fireball / John Gruber)

💩 Cool shit

Internet Artifacts - A fun trip through key milestones of the internet.

Finally Fix Your Technique - This feels like a cool glimpse of what future virtual personal trainers could be. Record your tennis or golf swing and compare it with pros to see what you’re doing wrong.

Recursive recipes - Break down ingredients to see how to truly make something from scratch.

AI-Pocket Field Guide - It’s a real life Pokédex! And it’s appropriately called ASH. This looks like just a concept but if it were on sale I’d seriously consider buying.

Giant 105 - A sweet, scrollable story about a giant.

Unusual Internet - A collection of links to some unconventional web interfaces.

No Clip Video Game Museum - Load and navigate 3D levels from some classic video games.

Sci-Fi Idea Bank - An impressively large spreadsheet tracking whether ideas from sci-fi exist today.

Silly Co Valley - A startup simulator.

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